Nature of Science as Portrayed in the Middle School Science and Technology Curriculum: The Case of Turkey

Abstract

Article History Received: 23 June 2016Representation of nature of science (NOS) within curricula including standards, grade level expectations, and textbooks and their alignment with each other to achieve teaching NOS is crucial. Thus, the aims of the study were to a) assess how NOS is portrayed in standards, grade level expectations and a teacher edition of seventh grade textbook of science and technology curriculum of Turkey and demonstrate b) how they aligned with each other to support teaching of NOS. A conceptual analysis was used to achieve the aims of the study by focusing on aspects of NOS , namely: the empirical, tentative, inferential, creative, theory-laden, and social dimensions of NOS; myth of "The Scientific Method"; nature of theories and laws; and social and cultural embeddedness of science. Analyses indicated that the targeted NOS aspects were insufficiently portrayed in these documents in that some important aspects of NOS (e.g., scientific theories and laws) are not included while some others (e.g., inferential and theory-driven) are implicitly represented. The findings also showed that the alignment between the curriculum and the textbook is not adequate to transfer the aims of the curriculum for NOS into classroom practices. Implications for curriculum developers and textbook publishers were also discussed.

Representation of Nature of Science Aspects in Secondary School Physics Curricula in East African Community Countries

“…Ferreria and Morais (2013) reported that science construction knowledge was mostly absent in the Portuguese science curriculum. In addition, a study of analysis of Turkey' science curriculum reveals that there is not only a low representation of NOS aspects, but also a connection between the curriculum and textbooks is inadequate to support NOS teaching in the classroom (Izci, 2017). Similar results were reported in the study of Caramaschi et al (2022), where the aspects of NOS in the Italian advanced secondary school curriculum are not explicitly represented.…”

“…We reviewed the physics syllabi of grades 10, 11, and 12 from Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, as these countries are neighbors and share similar cultures and history. The syllabi analyzed include an advanced level physics syllabus from Rwanda (REB, 2015); three physics teacher's guides from senior four to senior six used in Burundi (Ministère de l' Education, de l' Enseignement Superieur et de la Recherche Scientifique, 2016; 2017 and Ministère de l' Education, de la Formation Technique et Professionnelle, 2018) [Ministry of Education, Higher Learning and Scientific Research, 2016;2017 andMinistry of Education, Technical Training andProfessional, 2018]; teaching syllabi for physics and mathematics, volume 2 from Uganda (NCDC, 2013); and Physics syllabus for advanced secondary Education, form V to VI from Tanzania (Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, 2017).…”

Representations of Nature of Science in High School Physics Textbooks

“…The findings of this study are relatively consistent with the results of the analysis by Li et al (2018) on junior high school physics textbooks at the 8th grade in China which shows that the representation of NOS in the textbook is not dominated by explicit statements. Izci (2017) also describes the results of a similar NOS representation analysis, in which five of the ten aspects of NOS (empirical, inferential, tentative, scientific theories, and social and cultural embeddedness of science) are implicitly conceptualized in the IPA textbook (teacher edition) SMP in 7th grade in Turkey. This should be used as a major evaluation consideration considering that several research results suggest the use of an explicit approach as an effective strategy in building the conception of NOS (Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2000;Khishfe & Abd-El-Khalick, 2002).…”

“…This is noteworthy considering that students' conception of NOS is influenced by the representation of NOS in the science textbooks used (Chua, Tan, & Ramnarain, 2018). Meanwhile, the distribution of research that focuses on analyzing the representation of NOS in science textbooks is still centered on certain countries, such as the United States (Abd-El-Khalick et al, 2008), China (Li et al, 2018), Singapore ( Chua et al, 2018), Thailand (Chaisri & Thathong, 2014), and Turkey (Izci, 2017). There is no empirical study that analyzes the representation of NOS in Indonesian science textbooks.…”

Effectiveness of blended physics laboratory experimentation on pre-service physics teachers’ understanding of the nature of science

“…The current study's findings showed much of what had been reported in the literature about PSPTs' understanding of NOS. For example, learners can be taught about NOS and its aspects through explicit-reflective approach, not simply participating in scientific activities such as observation and experimenting (Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2000;Izci, 2017;Khishfe & Abd-El-Khalick, 2002;Lederman, 1992;Sardag et al, 2014).…”